


Alive

by boomsherlocka



Series: Alive (But Not Breathing) [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Android Jack, Jack-Centric, Literal Hockey Robot Jack, M/M, actual hockey robot Jack Zimmermann, jack is a robot, literal hockey robot jack zimmermann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 01:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11544972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boomsherlocka/pseuds/boomsherlocka
Summary: Jack knew his programming well.





	Alive

**Author's Note:**

> This has been floating around in my head for a while, so I finally wrote Actual Hockey Robot Jack Zimmermann. Enjoy.

Wires were rarely crossed. Jack knew his programming well, had memorized the code and could recite the numbers without hesitation. Hockey: 75%. Maintaining a Human Social Life: 15%. Miscellaneous Knowledge: 10%. As far back as his memory bank could go, this was how it had been. His memory bank had never been wiped, not once in his twenty-five years of existence.

 

Save for the glitch. Jack doesn't like thinking about the glitch, his processor would get stuck and he often has to reboot to move on from it.

 

His initial assessment of Eric Bittle was this: how is it possible for someone to be so unapologetically human? He is a million things at once; Jack cannot imagine what the chaos of his brain could possibly look like. It makes Jack proud of his simple percentiles, how very clear his function is. He does not envy humans and their distractions. He only wishes to play hockey and to excel at it, and so he does. He does not let Bittle's failures determine his own success.

 

He succeeds until he can no longer deny that Bittle will require help if Jack himself wishes to play the best hockey possible. If Bittle fails, he fails. He offers his assistance. Bittle seems shocked at first, at least that seems to be the prevailing emotion that can be read in his expression. There are other emotions there too, but they are too subtle for Jack to process, so he does not waste the power attempting to do so.

 

Checking practice does not go as Jack had planned. He had mapped out everything, drills, exercises, and recovery times, but Bittle defies planning. All his processing is invalidated when Bittle faints for the second time, a small, trembling ball on the ice.

 

Jack has to recalibrate. He cannot spare the space on his processor reserved for history, not if he expects to pass his specialized courses, and so he concludes that his only option is to sacrifice a portion of his hockey storage. 5%, nothing so drastic that he should notice a reduction of quality of play. The worst may be that his reaction times may lag slightly, but he can make up for that with accuracy easily.

 

He creates a new category, something between a subsection of Hockey and a subsection of Miscellaneous Knowledge. Checking Practice: 5%. It helps; it allows him to spend more time assessing Bittle's weaknesses and finding patches that will help eliminate them. They make progress. Lots of progress. Jack finds himself surprised by the focus that Bittle applies to their practices, especially since he seems to have a difficult time remaining focused elsewhere.

 

Jack does something that he has rarely attempted before successfully. He chirps Bittle. Chirps, technically, are a part of the Hockey segment of his memory bank, but it is a segment he rarely puts to use. “Maybe we should install an oven on the ice to make you more comfortable, Bittle,” Jack hears himself say.

 

Bittle's face cycles through another complicated series of emotions before he settles on a grin. “Was...did you seriously just chirp me, Jack Zimmermann?”

 

Jack felt his own expression mirror Bittle's. “I guess I did,” he said, his circuits sizzling with something new. He ran a diagnostic, afraid that something was misfiring, but they all came back normal. He shifted on his skates, flexing his toes, and said, “Back to work, Bittle.”

 

Bittle laughed. “I knew it was too good to be true,” he replied as he braced himself against the boards, his pleasant expression hardening to one of determination.

 

Jack skated forward.

 

_/\\_

 

It happened over time, little by little. Bittle would say something that Jack didn't quite understand, so he would borrow memory to help himself understand. He would always intend to return it to its previous function, but he always seemed to find a reason to keep in devoted to the new subsection of his memory- Checking Practice. He had yet to rename it to reflect what it was mostly used for- understanding Bittle.

 

Over the course of the two years he spent with Bittle at Samwell, Jack had come to a conclusion. Bittle, he decided, would make a terrible robot. His processor would stay overworked and would easily overheat with so many processes running at once. He was always doing a handful of things simultaneously: baking, listening to music, working on homework, dancing to said music, catching up on the group chat, cleaning, checking in with the Frogs-- it drained Jack just watching him. Somehow Bittle managed it all, but he never seemed unaffected by it. He moved like a man who was afraid that if he stopped that it might mean his demise. It was true, if Bittle stopped long enough to sit down he would crash, and he insisted that he did not have time to crash. Between checking practice in the mornings, class, team practice, and stress baking and late night homework, Bittle was the busiest of them all. Jack sometimes wished he could offer his own processor to supplement Bittle's inadequate human brain.

 

Most of the time Jack was content with his programming. Rarely did he wish he could bypass his human relationships and the work they entailed to focus fully on hockey. They were worth the 15% of memory they required, so he never borrowed from it. When he was younger, Jack wanted to devote anything he possibly could to hockey. Relationships weren't worth it, not when they were complicated and messy and not worth the confusion they made him feel. He wanted to forget Kent, mostly, wanting all of the time and memory and work he had put in gone.

 

So he deleted it. And he glitched. He was caught in a processing loop that required a system restore, a hard reboot, and a return to previous settings. It had been difficult. His parents had to work for days to make it right again, his Papa pouring over code while his Mama watched over his shoulder. He remembered coming to and seeing his mother crying, holding his hand. He felt his hand twitch against her own smaller, impossibly warm one before his grip tightened, holding her. Her smile was bright as she squeezed his hand back tightly. “Welcome back, Jacques,” she said, and her voice shook. He could feel his brow twitching as he looked up at her. She shook her head at him, leaning down to brush her lips against his forehead. “Don't worry, love. We've figured it out, you're all better. Back to normal. There may be some things you'll get hung up on but we can figure that out together, alright? There's no rush. Take your time recalibrating.”

 

Jack had nodded then, closing his eyes as he did just that. He had gaping holes in his memory, holes that didn't refill until his first year at Samwell. It took a while to feel balanced again, but hockey didn't fail him. Hockey felt right when nothing else did.

 

He could tell that Bittle felt similarly about the ice. Jack would watch him in the mornings, watch his long strides on the ice with his arms stretching to mirror the movement of his legs, and he knew that Bittle loved it. Jack was not sure he was capable of loving anything, but if he were it would be the ice, he knew. Sometimes, when he was lacing up or checking another player or skating as fast as he could to try to catch Bittle on the ice, he would forget that he was not human. For a moment, he could swear he could feel a heart beating in his chest.

 

_/\\_

 

One morning he lay in his bed, still connected to his charger and lazily going through his playbook storage. It was a rare morning off, and he was planning on enjoying it. He was on track to do so until he heard singing from the bathroom. He opened his eyes and they took a moment to focus, but he quickly unplugged his charger, letting his power cord drape down his side as he made his way to the bathroom. Bittle was singing so loudly that he couldn't hear Jack's approach, and he started quite dramatically when Jack ripped back the shower curtain. Bittle turned bright red, but only after he glanced down to see Jack's visible power cord. “S...sorry, I'll keep it down,” he was quick to stutter, and Jack retreated back to his room, carefully coiling the cord back inside him before closing the compartment on his side, his fingers tracing the nearly invisible seam there.

 

Living with Bittle had its advantages, but it also had it's disadvantages. The pleasant smell of pie, the cleanliness of the Haus, the way the team preferred to spend time together rather than going their separate ways, all of these things were Bittle's doing. He was welcoming and made people feel at ease. Jack devoted a little memory to this, trying to be more like Bittle in this way. He wanted to be the best Captain he could possibly be, and this would be beneficial.

 

It takes Bittle a week to ask about his cord. “How often do you have to charge?” he asks one day when Jack is helping him in the kitchen. Jack's hands are covered in flour, and his sensors are overloaded with pleasant tactile information as his fingers dig deeper into the powder.

 

“I charge nightly,” Jack replied, glancing over to him. “But I can get away with a week if I am in power saver mode. That is minimal activity. I've tested it before, just to see.”

 

Bittle nodded, rolling out his dough methodically. “So is it weird? Being around crazy humans who make no sense all the time? I'm sure it must be frustrating, watching us do things and fail over and over again. Especially as our Captain.”

 

Jack hummed, considering this. “I am not sure if frustrating is the right word,” he finally said, sprinkling flour when Bitty motioned for more. “But I am not sure what the right word might be. There are things that you all come up with, ideas and plays, that I could not compute. You process information differently than I do, you have more flexibility. I run programs and sequences and I know exactly how they are going to be processed every time. You, you can come up with ten different solutions to the same problem. There is a sort of elegance to that.”

 

Bittle smiled, shaking his head a bit. “I do believe that is the most I've ever heard you say, Mr Zimmermann. It's interesting hearing you talk about how you feel.”

 

“I do not feel anything,” Jack was quick to correct.

 

Bittle made a soft sound. “Now, I don't believe that for a second. You wouldn't work so hard if you didn't feel like you had to. You wouldn't be such a good captain if you didn't feel a responsibility to be one. I think you feel a lot more than you think, you just maybe don't really know what it feels like to feel, if that makes sense.”

 

“I believe it does,” Jack said, watching Bittle's hands crimp the edges of the crust.

 

Jack stores the bright smile that Bittle levels at him away in his memory bank, where it is in good company.

 

_/\\_

 

Soon, too soon, it's graduation. He knows he is playing for Providence and he knows that he will have a chance to prove that he is more than just his programming. Even still, Jack finds it impossible to focus, no matter how many times he tries. Something feels off, but nothing turns up on any of the diagnostics that Jack runs, and he runs them all. He feels like there's a frayed wire somewhere in his body shooting off electricity that is coursing through his body.

 

He feels it all through the ceremony. He feels it again, more intensely, as he holds Bittle close to his body when the smaller man comes close enough for a hug.

 

He feels it when his Papa rests his hand on Jack's shoulder, the solid warmth a grounding force. His Papa is talking but Jack isn't listening, he is running yet another diagnostic, checking the division of memory in his bank. What he finds forces him to run the test again, knowing that the results he will get will be the same.

 

Hockey: 50%. Checking Practice: 35% Maintaining a Human Social Life: 10%. Miscellaneous Knowledge: 5%.

 

So Jack runs.

 

_/\\_

 

Bittle is crying. Bittle is singing. Bittle is cleaning. Bittle is doing multiple things at the same time and all Jack can think about is the tears.

 

Why is he crying?

 

He wants to ask. Instead he says “Bitty,” and holds him and kisses him and the electricity suddenly makes sense. He's had this program running in the background for months now, the program that he's tailor-built for Bittle. It runs along side hockey, intermingled with thoughts of power plays and penalties and perfect top shelf goals. It runs when he's powered down, as close to dreams as he can ever get.

 

It runs now, as Jack runs his fingers through Bittle's hair. It's not quite as soft as flour, but it's close.

 

Jack commits every second to memory, recording the audio and video so he can replay it over and over again later. Maybe he'll figure out a way to share it with Bittle at some point. He memorizes the sensation of his lips against Bittle's, his tongue, his skin, his hair, and the thundering of his heartbeat against Jack's circuitry.

 

It's better than electricity, and for a moment, his lips pressed against Bittle's in his old bedroom, Jack swears that he is alive.

 


End file.
